


Keep You Apart Deep In My Heart

by OwenToDawn



Series: 15 Day Lyric Challenge 2020 [6]
Category: Fire Emblem Series, Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Caretaking, Demisexual!Linhardt, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Emotional Sex, F/M, Post-Black Eagles Route (Fire Emblem: Three Houses), Self-Esteem Issues, Vaginal Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-21
Updated: 2020-08-21
Packaged: 2021-03-06 22:54:55
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,521
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26026804
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OwenToDawn/pseuds/OwenToDawn
Summary: Dorothea had borne their insults with a smile and an underhanded remark of her own. She’s not foolish enough to let them think they cut her. But here, in the safety of their home, in the space where it’s him and no one else, she bleeds from the thousands of barbs delivered to her over the last few hours.
Relationships: Dorothea Arnault/Linhardt von Hevring
Series: 15 Day Lyric Challenge 2020 [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1882966
Comments: 6
Kudos: 22





	Keep You Apart Deep In My Heart

**Author's Note:**

> Hello! Today's lyric is from one of my favorite songs. Today's fic is inspired by the lyric:
> 
> "People you've been before/that you don't want around anymore/that push and shove and won't bend to your will/I'll keep them still" from Between The Bars by Elliott Smith
> 
> I truly adore this song and I hope I wrote something that gives people the same feeling I feel when I listen to this song. Comments are loved. Title from the same song.

Linhardt is still new to this. This being relationships, the kind where people try to be partners together. Not that he would ever say that because Dorothea would probably stare at him in horror if he said a year into his marriage to her that he felt like he didn’t know what he was doing. But he doesn’t mean that he doesn’t know if he loves her. That he’s quite sure of. It’s just the finer parts he sometimes still struggles with. Like knowing when to push and when to let her come to him with her troubles.

When he hears something smash in their bathroom, he realizes perhaps he had guessed wrong this time.

For a moment, the youthful part of him that dislikes confrontation urges him to roll over and pull the covers over his head and pretend he hasn’t heard anything. As always though, his love pulls him out of bed and into one of his plush sleeping robes and slippers before he steps across their bedroom and slips into the bathroom. Dorothea crouches on the ground, sweeping broken mirror shards up with the dustpan she keeps under the sink. Linhardt crouches down next to her and pulls them from her shaking hands and resumes the work without a word as she stands up.

He listens to her move to the sink and begin removing her jewelry. It’s almost pretty, the sound of glass clinking together as gold and pearls and silver hit the marble countertop. He keeps that thought to himself. The last thing he wants is for Dorothea to think he’s not taking her distress seriously.

It’s been building all night.

He doesn’t think Dorothea will ever be at a place where she believes he’s being honest from the start, but he doesn’t mind convincing her slowly that he means it every time he says something positive about her. After the glass is swept, he straightens and empties it in the bin next to the counter before putting the dustpan back in its proper place. On the counter, next to Dorothea’s carefully placed jewelry, sits the hand mirror she must’ve smashed in her anger or frustration, or judging by her tears, sadness.

"That fundraiser was a shit show,” she says, and okay, perhaps it’s sadness _and_ anger.

“Indeed it was,” he says. He takes her brush from her, keeping his touch gentle as he forces her fingers to let go. “I’m too short for this, could you sit please?”

He pretends he doesn’t see the wobble of her lower lip in the wall mirror as she grabs the iron wrought stool with delicate flower designs on each of the legs set with precious rubies and a matching velvet cushion on top; a gift from Manuela when they got married. Even if he thinks it’s a bit of a waste of gems he could use for enhancing magic instead, he does like watching Dorothea sit in it while applying makeup or doing her hair for the day. She deserves to look elegant if she wants, even if he’s the only one to see. With a mindful touch, he unties the elaborate ribbon keeping her hair piled in impressive braids and twirls atop her head and lets it spill down in a tangled mess. She won’t meet his eyes in the mirror as he begins to brush it out.

The fundraiser was for his institute for Crest research. Ferdinand had organized it, persuading the rich and socially minded to attend and pour money into the beginning building phase. While noble titles had been stripped away, the nobles themselves had yet to discard the idea that their blood and money, and indeed the money they made from shedding blood, made them more important than those around them. A detestable idea, but one that Linhardt was all too happy to take advantage of to make them part with their money. He’d put it to much better use. But as charming and lovely and beautiful as Dorothea was, there were those who could not see past her lack of title. Just as they had when she got into the Officer’s Academy, she found herself subject to remarks that implied she’d warmed her way into a noble’s bed with her body. Never mind that Linhardt no longer had a noble title. Never mind that Linhardt barely had a sex drive to speak of. Logic didn’t apply to bigotry.

People didn’t become equal overnight, no matter how heavy a tax Edelgard brought down on their heads.

Dorothea had borne their insults with a smile and an underhanded remark of her own. She’s not foolish enough to let them think they cut her. But here, in the safety of their home, in the space where it’s him and no one else, she bleeds from the thousands of barbs delivered to her over the last few hours. She weeps, quiet and restrained, as Linhardt brushes her hair out, removes her make up, and helps her disrobe from her complicated formal clothing. He loathes to put extra effort into anything. With Dorothea though, he’s learned that reassuring her in any way he can does not carry with it the burden of work. It never has. Not even as fresh faced students at Garreg Mach.

"Oh, sorry, you’ll have to help me here. I never know which one goes first,” Linhardt says with a frown as he sorts through her skin care creams. “I wish you’d let me label them.”

“The jars are too pretty for labels,” Dorothea says, and her voice doesn’t sound nearly as unsteady as it had when they’d first arrived home.

He smiles and turns back around to face her. “So are you, my love.”

Dorothea stares at him, mouth dropping open as her brow furrows even as she begins to giggle at his word play. “Lin! You…I could just smack you!”

"What, I’m right!” he says as he laughs.

“Oh, you just think you’re so smooth, don’t you?” she asks.

“Give me a moment, I’m sure I can come up with another line about that and these creams,” Linhardt says, relief flooding through him as Dorothea laughs, unrestrained and loud. “I do mean it though. You’re much too beautiful inside and out to allow anyone to place a label on you that you do not want.”

"I know…I know,” she says. “It’s just hard when they act like a nest of vipers.”

“Come to bed with me,” he says. “And I’ll make sure to push them far away from your thoughts.”

“Oh, will you now?” Dorothea asks.

Linhardt smiles and helps her to her feet. “For once, I find myself far from tired.”

Penetrative sex isn’t something they participate in often. It’s not that Linhardt doesn’t desire Dorothea or vice versa. It’s more that Linhardt simply finds the act to be tedious to the point he ends up going soft even if he _is_ aroused, so more often than not Linhardt finds himself with his head buried between Dorothea’s thighs as she gasps and trembles. It works. Linhardt gets the rush of making Dorothea feel good and Dorothea gets the rush of coming until she’s on the verge of passing out.

But tonight he wants to give her more.

So he spreads her out on their bed so he can kiss and touch every inch of her, make her cry for an entirely different reason. He presses compliments into her skin with a loving touch instead of words, because for a woman like Dorothea, words are hard to trust. Actions are what can be trusted.

She pulls away his clothes as she kisses at his jaw, but when she tries to maneuver them so she’s on top, he presses her back down into the mattress and settles his hips between her thighs. He’s rewarded with a soft moan of his name as he rubs the head of his cock along her folds, already sensitive from when he prepared her with his fingers and tongue. When he finally slides in, he has to take a moment. So rarely do they do this, that the sensation of her clenching and squeezing down around him with the wet heat of her cunt nearly makes him come the moment he’s inside.

“Oh, please, Lin…”

Her hips jerk beneath his, shifting in small circles as she tries to get more stimulation. He slips a hand down between them, fingers sliding slick over her clit as he begins to thrust, short but deep thrusts where he doesn’t pull out all the way. He lets her feel him and swallows her moans and whimpers with a kiss. She breaks apart beautifully for him, coming twice for him back to back as he fucks her and toys with her clit, and when he comes it’s with her name on his lips.

After, he cleans them both up and wraps her tight in his arms with their blankets cocooned around them. Only then, when she’s soft and pliant and vulnerable, does he whisper his praises in her ear and only then, does she finally accept them as the truth.


End file.
